The world economy may be up a creek without a paddle but Nintendo isn't feeling the pinch all that much. For the financial year ending March 31, 2009, the Kyoto-based video game veteran reported record figures for both sales and operating profit.

Sales clocked in at 1.83 trillion yen - a rise of 9 percent from last year. Operating profits were over 555 billion yen, an improvement of 14 percent from 2008.

As well as releasing these figures Nintendo also revealed hardware and software sales for the year. The Nintendo Wii shifted 25.95 million units worldwide last year, bringing total lifetime sales to 50.39 million.

The DS system did even better and clocked up 31.18 million units sold, with a lifetime total of 101.78 million.

In terms of software, the big movers are as follows (numbers in brackets are lifetime sales):

Nintendo DS:

Pokemon Platinum - 3.75 million

Kirby Super Star Ultra - 2.36 million

Brain Training 1 & 2 - 7.31 million combined (31.12 million)

Nintendo Wii:

Wii Fit - 16.37 million (18.22 million)

Mario Kart - 15.4 million

Animal Crossing: City Folk - 3.38 million

Wii Music - 2.65 million

We're sure you'll agree that those are some seriously amazing figures there, and they give a pretty good indication of why Nintendo is sitting pretty at the moment.

Damien has over a decade of professional writing experience under his belt, as well as a repulsively hairy belly. Rumours that he turned down a role in The Hobbit to work on Nintendo Life are, to the best of our knowledge, completely and utterly unfounded. DamienMcFerran